Wednesday, January 26, 2011

My lightbulb moment

Do you remember this quilt? I call it Zig Zag Mountains. I must of cut up all the fabric I bought for this quilt because I had lots of left over strips. I decided to change it up a bit and with inspiration from a quilt that Wanda over at Exuberant Color posted on Sept.8, 2010, I started piecing what I am calling Zig Zag Steps.

Wanda's QOV inspiration

I had enough patches to make two of these periwinkle zig zag steps this past weekend. I laid out the patches on the design wall and then it took me one hour and ten minutes to sew each top together.

So where is the lightbulb moment? I cut 3" strips when I make my zig zag quilts and when I cut my binding, so I have a lot of 3" pieces left. While I was putting together the zig zag steps the lightbulb came on and I thought to myself that I could take the leftover binding pieces and make these 5 1/2" x 5 1/2" patches throw them in a box and eventually have enought to make another baby quilt. Now that I think about it this is not rocket science, but it never occurred to me to do this.

I laid the folded binding on a strip of the Kona snow. I roughly cut the binding strips into a length that is a multiple of 6". This is because I will be trimming the patches to 5 1/2".

I opened the binding strips up and sewed the strips together. Next I pressed the seam toward the dark fabric.

Patches cut to size.

Here is my box that I will be using for my patches and the precut Kona snow 3" strips. No excuses now!

So I started looking around for some binding ends I know I kept and I found a pile of stuff. I sorted it and clockwise left to right: larger pieces and narrow strips, selveges, pieces of white Kona, a patchwork section of linen and scraps of pink, and on the right is leftover binding pieces. Tonight I will turn that pile of binding pieces into my little 5 1/2" x 5 1/2" zig zag steps patches.

While I was digging around I found more patches already the correct size of the periwinkle patches I used in both of the zig zag quilts! That will be four quilts that will be done with periwinkle patches. The only mistake I made was that I didn't keep fabric for the binding for these quilts - oops! I will have to come up with something. I am looking forward to cleaning up all the scraps I have around and making these patches and turning them into quilts. I had a 15 3/4 yard pieces of Kona snow in my stash that will be used in making this scrap quilts. I have a feeling when I work at the quilt shop in Charm, Ohio in May the first thing on my shopping list will be a bolt of Kona snow.